Slideshow Pro Madness….

So I’ve avoided (thus far) having a LiveBooks site. While I LOVE the presentation and clean lines that a LiveBooks site has (link to perfect example here —> Chase Jarvis and here —> Justin Francis) I’ve not been able to break down and spend the money on having one made.

I’ve been working with SlideShow Pro for some time and have had relatively good success at building a look that suits my needs and my budget…that is until now. With the latest release of SSP for LightRoom…I’ve run into a snafu, now it’s got me thinking. Do I want to save the jack and figure things out on my own as I have been, or hand it over to the folks at LiveBooks to craft me a new site? Live books, from what I hear has a sweet back end that allows for seemless re-building of your web galleries and portfolios by simply uploading your new files to their server. It re-builds your site automatically and you just sit back and watch. Something I’m thinking sounds pretty good right now.

Here goes my train of thought and the real reason for the post. There seems to come a time in most professional photgrapher’s lives where they have to give up some control, be it the finances, the phone wrangling, the styling, scouting, etc. The website for me is the current conundrum. What may seem like a simple marketing tool and fairly straightforward part of my business has given me a lot of grief lately. Making it do what I want, when I want and on my terms has not been an easy task, mainly due to Flash galleries. I had found an answer which until now did the trick (darned software updates!).

I’ve dabbled in web development for years and have built countless websites for friends, colleages, models and even my father. Until now, no problemo! But I think I’m at a breaking point. While all my senses say, HOLD ON, don’t let go, my tolerance for “re-learning” all the software updates and changes is keeping me from progressing on what I’m out to do — SHOOT — Take Pictures!

I’m finding more and more that when I make time to shoot, be creative and spend more time looking through the viewfinder, the more I love my work. It’s when I’ve got to sit and wrangle a keyboard for hours just to make one photo come up first where I loose my patience. I just read a great post that Chase Jarvis had on his blog titled “The Creative Gap”. To boil it down…in order to shoot better, we need to shoot more…do more work. Well that’s where I’m at with this website stuff. It’s keeping me from doing more work. Instead of setting up personal work for growth opportunities, I’m messing with more stuff that looks like this:

  <style type="text/css">
body {
  color: #666666;
  margin-bottom: 0;
  margin-top: 10px;
  background:#fff 50%;
  padding:0px;
  font:11px/16px "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
  text-align:center;

Than this

So until I’ve made my mind up, my front page sits stagnant, in a frozen state…

I’d say I’ll let you know how it goes, whether the senses and budget win the battle to keep control or my disgust makes my budget give in, but you’ll soon find out by just stopping back at the home page.

Let’s just hope it happens sooner rather than later…and we all can learn something from it.